On-Demand Mobility Is Still Expensive

I needed to get home from work late last night and I didn’t have a car. Cry me a river.

So I went to the Palo Alto train station, only to discover that I had read the train schedule on my phone wrong. The next train wasn’t passing through for another 45 minutes.

So I looked up the cost of a ride-share home. The distance is a hair under 15 miles.

Lyft wouldn’t even quote me a price — apparently the ride was out of their service area.

Uber quoted me a price of $50.

The train is $5. I got two slices of pizza and waited for the train.

Maybe this isn’t a good use of time, running the cost benefit analysis. But it was just hard for me to pull the trigger on a $50 ride home.